Rod Dreher's Blog, page 555

Cop Killers and Black Lives Matter

Did you see this heated exchange between Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke and CNN’s Don Lemon on the subject of cop killing and Black Lives Matter? Watch:

Meanwhile, The New York Times reports that the police have concluded that Gavin Long lured them into an ambush that resulted in three police deaths. Excerpt:

On a social media site registered under the name Gavin Long, a young African-American man who refers to himself as “Cosmo” posted videos and podcasts and shared biographical and personal information that aligned with the information that the authorities had released, so far, about the gunman.

In one YouTube video, titled “Protesting, Oppression and How to Deal with Bullies,” the man discusses the killings of African-American men at the hands of police officers, including the July 5 death in Baton Rouge of Alton B. Sterling, and he advocates a bloody response instead of the protests that the deaths sparked.

“One hundred percent of revolutions, of victims fighting their oppressors,” he said, “have been successful through fighting back, through bloodshed. Zero have been successful just over simply protesting. It doesn’t — it has never worked and it never will. You got to fight back. That’s the only way that a bully knows to quit.”

“You’ve got to stand on your rights, just like George Washington did, just like the other white rebels they celebrate and salute did,” he added. “That’s what Nat Turner did. That’s what Malcolm did. You got to stand, man. You got to sacrifice.”

Elsewhere, the Times writes:

The twin attacks — three officers dead Sunday in Baton Rouge, five killed on July 7 in Dallas, along with at least 12 injured over all — have set off a period of fear, anguish and confusion among the nation’s 900,000 state and local law enforcement officers. Even the most hardened veterans call this one of the most charged moments of policing they have experienced.

Officers from Seattle to New Orleans are pairing up in squad cars for added safety and keeping their eyes open for snipers while walking posts. It is an anxious time: Officers must handle not only vocal denunciations from peaceful protesters who criticize abusive policing, but also physical attacks by a tiny few on the periphery.

Law enforcement officials said it had been generations since the nation endured two separate episodes in which so many police officers were killed.

“We’ve seen nothing like this at all,” said Darrel W. Stephens, the executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association and an instructor at the Public Safety Leadership Program at Johns Hopkins University. “The average officer in America, who was tense anyway, their tension and vigilance is going to increase even more. Police officers have always been vulnerable, and they know it. But somewhere inside you, you didn’t think it would happen. But now we’re seeing it happen.”

According to 2015 police statistics, the overwhelming number of murders and other violent crimes in Baton Rouge, a violent city, happen in the wholly or predominantly black parts of town. It’s not even close. Look at this SpotCrime map of Baton Rouge, which aggregates the most recent crime data and plots the incidents on a map: almost all of these incidents in the past two weeks occurred in predominantly African-American areas. The population of East Baton Rouge Parish, which is the city, is 46 percent black [UPDATE: Inside the boundaries of the city proper, it’s 55 percent black]. Poverty in the parish is concentrated in, yes, the black part of town.

My point is this: if you are a BR police officer or EBRP sheriff’s deputy, you spend a disproportionate amount of your time policing the black community, which is disproportionately violent. By no means is this to say that police brutality is justified or is not a problem. It is to point out that police brutality occurs within the context of a badly broken society. Our society overall asks cops — white, black, Hispanic, and Asian — to go into parts of our cities where most of us would never venture, and deal on a daily basis with some of the worst people in the world: killers, drug dealers, pimps, wife-beaters, etc. Many of these cretins are armed. I’m not sure how someone contends with the worst of humanity as part of one’s job without losing one’s own humanity. I wouldn’t last a day out there on the inner-city beat, and you probably wouldn’t either.

I don’t understand why we are given an either-or. Why can’t we be in favor of reforming the police to reduce brutality and stand by the police, recognizing that the great majority of law enforcement officers are good men and women who try to do the right thing in an extremely difficult job?

As a general rule, I reject people who blame violent acts on their political opponents. More often than not, this is an attempt to silence speech they don’t like. If people have a problem with police brutality or what they see as racist treatment of black people, then by all means they have a right to speak out against it. This is true with any issue. Conservatives who rightly despise the way the campus left tries to silence dissent should be very careful not to do the same thing to those protesting against the police.

That said, with eight police dead this month at the hands of black radicals who deliberately targeted them as a political statement, Black Lives Matter is at a crossroads. This kind of rhetoric, authored by BLM’s founders and taken from its website, drives its followers to radical extremes:

We completely expect those who benefit directly and improperly from White supremacy to try and erase our existence. We fight that every day. … When we say Black Lives Matter, we are talking about the ways in which Black people are deprived of our basic human rights and dignity. It is an acknowledgement Black poverty and genocide is state violence. It is an acknowledgment that 1 million Black people are locked in cages in this country–one half of all people in prisons or jails–is an act of state violence. … And, perhaps more importantly, when Black people cry out in defense of our lives, which are uniquely, systematically, and savagely targeted by the state, we are asking you, our family, to stand with us in affirming Black lives.

That’s just one example. And this:

We are committed to disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, and especially “our” children to the degree that mothers, parents and children are comfortable.

This, in a time when 72 percent of all African-American babies are born to single mothers, and that fatherlessness is a strong predictor of whether or not a male will be involved with the criminal justice system.

I don’t blame people at all for protesting against police brutality. What I do object to is the hysterical language (e.g., “genocide”) routinely and repeatedly used by the movement to characterize the situation, and to the decontextualization of the problem such that it makes it appear that police mistreatment is the most significant problem threatening the lives of black people in America.

Ofc. Montrell Jackson’s young black son will grow up without a father, and the boy’s mother without her husband, because a radicalized black man shot and killed him on Sunday, and two of his colleagues. I won’t say this is the fault of Black Lives Matter, because I genuinely believe it’s factually and morally wrong to blame them — this, even though I do not now and never have liked that organization, given its radicalism and its bullying tactics.

But I reserve the right to change my mind on that depending on what happens next.

UPDATE: A pro-Black Lives Matter note was found near a Daytona Beach police cruiser firebombed this past weekend. “F–k The Police,” it also said, charmingly.

UPDATE.2: From the law enforcement presser today in Baton Rouge:

“We’ve been questioned about our militarized tactics, This is why, because we are up against a force that is not playing by the rules.”

— Maya Lau (@mayalau) July 18, 2016

The Troll Move That Ate The GOP

Everybody’s talking about this long piece by Buzzfeed’s conservative politics writer McKay Coppins, talking about how a Trump feature he wrote a while back may have baited Donald into running for president just to show up his critics. Excerpts:

Donald Trump stood on a debate stage in downtown Detroit, surrounded by haters he was determined to dispatch: Liddle Marco to his right, Lyin’ Ted to his left, Megyn Kelly at the moderator’s table straight ahead, and — somewhere out there, in a darkened living room 1,500 miles away — me.

About 30 minutes into the debate, Kelly asked Trump to respond to a recent BuzzFeed News report about his position on immigration.

“First of all, BuzzFeed?” Trump said, waving an index finger in the air. “They were the ones that said under no circumstances will I run for president — and were they wrong.” My phone lit up with a frenzied flurry of tweets, texts, and emails, each one carrying variations of the same message: This is all your fault.

It has to do with a 2013 profile Coppins wrote of Trump, claiming that his presidential candidacy was a sham. It badly got on Trump’s nerves, and he wouldn’t stop tweeting about it and complaining about it. Trump became obsessed, publicly so. More:

As Trump completed his conquest of the Republican Party this year, I contemplated my supposed role in the imminent fall of the republic — retracing my steps; poring over old notes, interviews, and biographies; talking to dozens of people. What had most struck me during my two days with Trump was his sad struggle to extract even an ounce of respect from a political establishment that plainly viewed him as a sideshow. But what I didn’t realize at the time was that he’d felt this way for virtually his entire life — face pressed up against the window, longing for an invitation, burning with resentment, plotting his revenge.

I had landed on a long and esteemed list of haters and losers — spanning decades, stretching from Wharton to Wall Street to the Oval Office — who have ridiculed him, rejected him, dismissed him, mocked him, sneered at him, humiliated him — and, now, propelled him all the way to the Republican presidential nomination, with just one hater left standing between him and the nuclear launch codes.

What have we done?

Read the whole thing. You’ll enjoy it, I predict. The thing about it is how, through piling up telling details, Coppins shows that Trump has only ever been about showing up the people who look down on him. For example, here’s Coppins talking about how the White House Correspondents Dinner turned into a roast of Trump, who was in the audience and didn’t expect to become the butt of so many jokes:

The longer the night went on, the more conspicuous Trump’s glower became. He didn’t offer a self-deprecating chuckle, or wave warmly at the cameras, or smile with the practiced good humor of the aristocrats and A-listers who know they must never allow themselves to appear threatened by a joke at their expense. Instead, Trump just sat there, stone-faced, stunned, simmering — Carrie at the prom covered in pig’s blood.

There’s this moment from last year, just before Trump made his presidential announcement, which was still not a sure thing:

One morning in early June, Nunberg recalled, he was sitting in Trump Tower as his boss read that day’s New York Post. There was a column by conservative writer Jonah Goldberg gleefully ridiculing the Apprentice star’s 2016 prospects. “He’s a more plausible candidate than, say, Honey Boo Boo,” it read, “but that’s mostly because of constitutional age limits.” When Trump finished, he set the paper down quietly on his desk.

“Why don’t they respect me, Sam?” Trump asked.

The pathos of these moments is, frankly, stunning. You see that behind all that bullying and bluster is a radically insecure boy from Queens who can’t buy his way into the elites and who doesn’t understand why. Trump naturally appeals to and channels the resentment of people like him. This explains the political jiu-jitsu he’s been doing for the past year, and that has allowed him to defeat the GOP Establishment: the more they make fun of him, the more powerful he becomes.

The last American president who was so radically insecure and resentful was Richard Nixon, who was undone by his paranoia, and very nearly caused a constitutional crisis. Nixon was an extraordinarily gifted politician who, whatever his many faults, understood statesmanship. Trump is just a guy from TV. And he might just become the most powerful man in the world.

Coppins’s piece is one long brief for why a man who is so messed up on the inside should never, ever be given that kind of power. But you know what? He just might win. Voters this year have the chance to choose between the Nixon Of The Democrats, and Donald Milhous Trump, who has all of Nixon’s vices but none of his virtues.

‘The Party Of Lost Causes’

I’m a social and religious conservative. My friend Damon Linker is not. But I join him in being astonished by the GOP’s obstinate cluelessness about how the country has changed. From Linker’s column:

This isn’t the platform of Donald Trump, who is focused on immigration, trade, and terrorism while soft-peddling the social issues. On the contrary, this is a party still endlessly obsessed with cultural conservatism. (In that sense, it’s far more Mike Pence’s party than Donald Trump’s.) But the GOP is not just obsessed with cultural conservatism. This is a party unwilling to think or speak about social and cultural trends of which it disapproves in any terms other than absolute rejectionism, as if nothing in the world and the country had changed in the past two decades.

In 2004, George W. Bush ran for reelection on a platform that included the goal of passing a constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage. It went nowhere at all. Twelve years later, same-sex marriage has been declared a constitutional right by the Supreme Court, it is legal in all 50 states, and it is supported by a majority of Americans. And how does the GOP respond? By calling in its 2016 platform for an amendment that would ban same-sex marriage in the U.S. Constitution.

Everything has changed. Nothing has changed.

And that’s not all. The platform draft approved by delegates last week also favors “conversion therapy” for gays (RNC chair Reince Priebus disputes that the platform explicitly calls for this, though the language seems intended to tacitly support parents who want to subject their kids to this “therapy”). The draft platform holds that “natural marriage” creates an environment in which children are less likely to become addicted to drugs or be otherwise damaged. And it describes pornography as a “public menace” and a “public health crisis.”

The GOP, even in 2016, is a singularly reactionary party.

He goes on to say that he doesn’t mean the stances individuals take, but the fact that a major political party commits itself to fighting for these things in the public arena.

Well, let me be clear about a few things. I fully support natural marriage and the natural family, and believe that government policy should be geared towards supporting it. I’m also against same-sex marriage, and strongly against pornography. By Damon’s reckoning, I’m probably a reactionary, which is fine by me. I’ll own that; doesn’t bother me.

But I agree that it’s just … weird that in 2016, the Republican Party at the official level still pushes for policies like this. It’s like the official party still believes that politics can fix these problems, that politics can reclaim a culture that we conservatives have lost. The grassroots GOP voters don’t even believe this stuff, which is why Donald Trump is going to be nominated this week, and not an actual social conservative.

It’s not that I directly mind that there are GOP folks who believe that Obergefell was wrongly decided (as I do), and want to devote themselves to the hopeless cause of having it overturned. I find it frustrating for indirect reasons, including the way maintaining this illusion distracts from what we social and religious conservatives can and should be doing to respond effectively and meaningfully to this new world.

For example, all the money, the attention, and the effort going into fighting for the Lost Cause of natural marriage in the political arena is money, attention, and effort not going to fighting for shoring up natural marriage within the culture (and within the church).

The political conservative cliche justifying tax cuts as a strategy of shrinking government is: “starve the beast”. You want to starve the Religious Conservatism, Inc., beast in Washington? Redirect your contributions to religiously conservative organizations and ministries doing real work at the cultural level, especially local, to build a thick and resilient traditional culture. I bet there’s a classical Christian school in your city that could do a lot more with your donation than some lobbyist panjandrum inside the Beltway, who thrives on perpetuating among donors the belief that he is a lot more effective than he really is. I don’t want to call it a racket, because I am confident that at least some of the lobbying in DC does some good. But it’s a persistent delusion among a certain kind of Christian conservative that politics is the answer to cultural collapse.

They remind me of the educational reform people who believe that public policy is the key to fixing the schools. They say this, and genuinely believe it, because it’s something that they can control — as opposed to the broken families and family systems at the heart of broken schools. That problem is largely beyond politics, and can’t be solved by winning a vote or writing a check. What’s the saying? When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

Look, when it comes to social conservative goals in the political arena, the only thing I really care about is protecting religious liberty. I mean by that the right to be left alone, both individually and within our institutions, with the broadest possible firewall between us and the state. The day when Christianity set the boundaries, tone, and direction of American culture has passed. What we are now defending is against American culture setting the boundaries, tone, and direction of Christianity. That’s not a battle that can be won in the halls of Congress. It can only be won in our churches, our schools, and our communities.

UPDATE: Elijah writes:

But, look, you’ve only got to read a few pieces over at The Corner to see that many Republicans or Republican sympathizers are still pushing the same tired tax cuts, hawkish foreign policy, crony capitalism that has gotten the party elite so disliked. And they can’t seem to understand why people are supporting Trump! It’s such a willful blindness.

Totally fair and necessary comment.

Diary Of A Racist Cop Killer

Gavin Eugene Long, who murdered three Baton Rouge cops today, was a narcissist who fancied himself a race warrior, a ladies man, and a lifestyle coach. A selection of his tweets:

You cant talk (or protest) the devil into changing his ways, this has never been done and never will
# 1.Exact Justice (Blood) or 2.Revenue

— Convos With Cosmo (@ConvosWithCosmo) July 10, 2016

Power doesnt respect weakness. Power only respects Power.
# Alton # Castile

— Convos With Cosmo (@ConvosWithCosmo) July 8, 2016

They gone be mad when niggas start doing this. pic.twitter.com/dTga9v8ctA

— The Hood Bible (@HoodBibIe) July 7, 2016

Treat Me Like a God, or meet my Devil

— Convos With Cosmo (@ConvosWithCosmo) July 5, 2016

Your Spiritual Journey: First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win

— Convos With Cosmo (@ConvosWithCosmo) June 24, 2016

What’s so interesting about reading Long’s Twitter feed is that he’s pretty clearly not concerned with racial injustice. For him, it’s all about masculinity and power. Those three Baton Rouge police officers he murdered today were real men; he was a punk to the marrow.

Cop Widows and Their Fatherless Children

A reader who is a widow and a mother writes in the wake of the Baton Rouge shooting. I know her; she is a churchgoing Christian who does not curse. But she curses below. I’ve left the words in, but bowdlerized, because I want you to feel the raw emotion in this e-mail:

I can’t get the comments box to let me type, so I am sending you my thoughts here.

Any clue what it is like to be a single parent? To be a fatherless child?

Any clue how much energy it takes to keep the house functioning with bills paid, maintenance done, and meals cooked?

Any idea how hard it is to look forward to a day when you have no one to tell about the mundane stuff, like the freezer that went out and wasted the entire batch of meat you bought two days ago or the memory of that family trip or how your mom made potato soup?

Any idea how hard it is to find energy to pay attention to what your kids are looking at on their computers and phones when you are simply trying to find energy to face another day in a life you never wanted?

Any idea how it is to help a 16 year old adjust when he now easily looks over your head, his voice is changing, and he has no one to teach him to shave?

Any idea what you say to your 19 year old daughter who has decided not to date because the reason you date is so you can find a life mate and who will walk her down the aisle since her dad isn’t here?

Any idea how hard you cry when you son looks at you and says, “Mom, I don’t remember the sound of Dad’s voice anymore”?

I keep reading this rhetoric about politics and guns and who to blame, and the truth is it is just that, rhetoric. No one has any plans to do anything to fix any of it. They just want to bitch and point fingers and protect their own interests. You know where I am on this right now? F–k them. F–k them and their rhetoric. Those questions are pointless, empty bulls–t. Let’s ask some real question and come up with some real answers.

If we look beyond the rhetoric, the real issue is men being strong leaders. The real issue is breakdown of family, of family values, of security, safety, respect. In 10 days we have lost eight leaders. Who is going to step in and fill those holes so those kids don’t grow up disconnected? We talk about being politically disenfranchised. F–k that. Let’s get to the real issue. The real issue is being emotionally disenfranchised. Who is going to help these kids find their way? Who is going to help these exhausted moms get up day after day and still have enough emotional and mental energy to be moms and not just the machine that makes money to keep roof over their head and food in their mouths.

Being a parent is so much more than financially providing. We live in utter chaos because parents have quit providing emotionally and mentally. Look at any of these shooters. Show me one that is really connected and has strong mental and emotional support and connections. You won’t find one, so it seems to me if we want to heal our communities, we need to step up and support the moms who are going one hell of a hard road alone. We need to be the surrogate parents. Who is going to do that? THAT is what we need to be talking about. We need to be talking about how society as a whole is failing.

I hope your book about the Benedict Option addresses issues like this because my concern is that people are going to be looking for ways to protect and provide for themselves and their families, but a real Benedict Option provides for those who are hurting and in need, not just physical need but emotional and mental need. We are only as strong as our weakest members, and right now, there are children and wives/mothers who are incredibly vulnerable and broken beyond words. They may have the strength to keep getting out of bed every day, but make no mistake about it, their hearts are broken and their spirits are crushed. They will only heal with God’s hand, and it is time for the rhetoric to stop and the hand of God to reach out through the hands of His people.

At least that is how it looks from my (fatherless) table.

From Clint Eastwood To … Chachi?

Oh, how the mighty have fallen:

Scott Baio, star of the sitcoms Charles in Charge and the Happy Days spinoff Joanie Loves Chachi, has announced that he will speak at the upcoming Republican National Convention in Cleveland after being personally asked by Donald Trump. “I was at a fundraiser for Mr. Trump the other night with my wife and he invited me to speak at the convention, which was completely unexpected and out of left field,” the actor told Fox News Saturday.

Baio provides Trump with a celebrity endorsement, something lacking from the list of expected convention speakers that includes Trump’s wife and children, former GOP presidential hopefuls like Ted Cruz and Ben Carson, high-ranking Republicans, military veterans and UFC president Dana White. Football star Tim Tebow was initially named as a convention speaker before the quarterback quashed those rumors. Baio added in his Fox News interview that Trump was “a man that I believe in.”

The 2012 GOP Convention’s celebrity superstar was Clint Eastwood. This year, it’s Scott Baio. If Edward Gibbon were Perez Hilton, he would know how to frame this.

Three Cops Slain In Baton Rouge

Just got out of church and learned that three Baton Rouge law enforcement officers where shot dead in BR today. Two are wounded and hospitalized. One other was shot, but apparently seems not to have been hospitalized and was sent to a different hospital; information sketchy now. One suspect dead, two at large, reports say. The very latest is cops are said to be in a standoff with one suspect. Not sure yet what happened. An ambush? Hard to say. One witness I’m listening to now on WAFB, the CBS station in Baton Rouge, said suspects were shooting with semiautomatic weapons before police arrived. He said he saw one man dead and a man with a gun running towards him — this, 45 seconds before police arrived on the scene. If so, that would indicate that this might not be a Dallas-style premeditated cop killing.

Community leaders calling for no Alton Sterling protests in the city today.

No news yet as to the race of the suspects or victims.

The city is extremely on edge now. It’s hard to imagine what will happen next. Actually it’s all too easy to imagine it. God help us. I’ll update this post as we know more.

UPDATE: Last week, BRPD arrests thwarted an alleged plot to murder police, tied to a pawn-shop robbery. One of the suspects arrested is 13 years old.

UPDATE.2: Three police officers are dead in Baton Rouge, and the public does not yet know who did the shootings or why, but this scumbag, the LGBT editor at Think Progress and, in his own words, “proud SJW,” is already busy blaming law enforcement:

Given how police haven’t been held accountable for murdering black people, it’s no surprise some are taking justice into their own hands.

— Zack Ford (@ZackFord) July 17, 2016

There are no words. Well, actually there are words, but I will not say them. Zack Ford and those like him are making America worse.

BTW, local BR media reporting that the dead shooter is from Missouri.

UPDATE.3: Shooter was Gavin Eugene Long, black male, from Kansas City, Mo. Today was his 29th birthday.

UPDATE.4: Here is Montrell Jackson, one of the Baton Rouge police officers killed today, and his now-fatherless son, in happier times:

UPDATE.5: A Facebook post from Ofc. Jackson, during the protests in Baton Rouge:

And here is one of the other officers killed today, Ofc. Matthew Gerald, and the woman who is now his widow:

UPDATE.6: The Daily Caller found some YouTube videos posted by Gavin Long. He was a stone-cold white-hating racist.

UPDATE.7: The third dead police officer was Brad Garofala, a father of four who was set to go on vacation Monday. 

Methodist Crisis

The Western Division of the United Methodist Church gave the middle finger to the rest of the church by electing the Rev. Karen Oliveto, an openly gay woman, as its bishop:

“I think at this moment I have a glimpse of the realm of God,” 58-year-old Oliveto said after her election, according to a news story from the church. “Today we took a step closer to embody beloved community and while we may be moving there, we are not there yet. We are moving on to perfection.”

On to perfection! More:

The United Methodist Church, which has more than 7 million members in the United States, is divided over the issue of homosexuality. “This election raises significant concerns and questions of church polity and unity,” Bruce R. Ough, president of the Church’s Council of Bishops, said in a statement after the vote.

As Ough wrote, “we find ourselves in a place where we have never been.” He highlighted the divisions on the issue:



“There are those in the church who will view this election as a violation of church law and a significant step toward a split, while there are others who will celebrate the election as a milestone toward being a more inclusive church. …Our differences are real and cannot be glossed over, but they are also reconcilable.”

Nonsense. They are not reconcilable. What does it mean to be a Methodist if an entire division of the church can defy the international body on such an important theological issue?

The folks at Juicy Ecumenism are all over this story. Here’s a reprint of a 2005 piece John Lomperis wrote reporting on a presentation that Oliveto gave at a gay United Methodist gathering. Excerpt:

In her sermon during the closing worship, she criticized St. Paul for casting a demon out of the slave girl in Acts 16:16-18. Oliveto encouraged her audience to question the traditional interpretation that this exorcism was “an act of liberation” for the girl. Negatively comparing Paul’s response to the slave girl to his subsequent saving of the jailer, Oliveto asserted that Paul was not motivated by compassion for the slave girl and noted that the text does not say that she found salvation.

The RMN leader went on to defend the demon’s possession of the slave, as this demon helped enrich her owners by giving her fortune-telling abilities. Oliveto declared that by casting the demon out of the girl, Paul did nothing to make the girl’s life better and “probably made it worse” as she was now “damaged goods.” Oliveto was very concerned by “questions about the imposition of religious values, in this case religious values,” such as if the exorcism was really good for the slave girl and whether she wanted to be exorcised. However, she did not explore the possibility of demon possession having had any detrimental effect upon the girl.

So there you have it: the newest United Methodist bishop once denounced St. Paul for casting a demon out of a slave girl. What else do you need to know about the Western Division of the United Methodist Church for having elected such a heretic as its bishop?

Lomperis points out separately that the Western Division of the UMC is tiny, and though it encompasses one-third of the United States geographically, it has about as many Methodists as northern Georgia. The South Central Division, five times larger than the Western Division (which is the fastest declining division in the US), immediately filed a complaint with the church’s governing body.

What does a pastor (a bishop, a division) have to say or do to get kicked out of the United Methodist Church? Seriously, are there special rules that let gay-rights advocates defy the church without sanction? If they can get away with it, who’s to stop anybody from doing whatever they want to?

Evangelicals All In For Trump

Pew’s latest survey of religion and the 2016 election finds that white Evangelicals are strongly behind Donald Trump. Excerpts:

Indeed, the latest Pew Research Center survey finds that despite the professed wariness toward Trump among many high-profile evangelical Christian leaders, evangelicals as a whole are, if anything, even more strongly supportive of Trump than they were of Mitt Romney at a similar point in the 2012 campaign. At that time, nearly three-quarters of white evangelical Protestant registered voters said they planned to vote for Romney, including one-quarter who “strongly” supported him.1 Now, fully 78% of white evangelical voters say they would vote for Trump if the election were held today, including about a third who “strongly” back his campaign.

More:

While many evangelical voters say they “strongly” support Trump over Clinton, this does not necessarily mean Trump is their ideal choice for president or that they are convinced he shares their religious convictions. In the current survey, 42% of white evangelicals say it will be difficult to choose between Trump and Clinton because neither one would make a good president. And a January Pew Research Center poll found that 44% of white evangelical Republicans view Trump as “not too” or “not at all” religious.

But even if many evangelicals do not think he shares their religious commitment, most do think that Trump understands the needs of people like them. Indeed, fully six-in-ten white evangelical voters (61%) say they think Trump understands their needs “very” or “fairly” well, while just 24% say this about Clinton.

Pew goes on to say that white Evangelical support for Trump is driven at least as much by opposition to Hillary Clinton as actual support for Trump. In other words, they’re not voting for Trump as much as they are voting against Clinton. Pew found that large numbers of pro-Hillary voters are in the same boat: they’re voting against Trump, not for her.

And get this:

White evangelical Protestants who say they attend religious services regularly are just as strongly supportive of Donald Trump as are

evangelicals who attend religious services less often. Fully three-quarters of both groups say they would vote for Trump over

Clinton if the election were today, and roughly a third in each group describe themselves as strong Trump supporters.

If memory serves, back during the GOP primaries, there was a Trump gap between churchgoing Evangelicals, who generally opposed Trump, and non-churchgoing Evangelicals, who generally embraced him. The gap has now vanished.

Read the whole thing.

O Beautiful Two Gay-ish Guys

The New Yorker’s TV critic tweets:

A kid just told me that “in a magical, wonderful world” Aaron Burr would kiss Hamilton instead of killing him & then they would get married.

— emily nussbaum (@emilynussbaum) July 16, 2016

Whee!